Bad Boys still fighting for their legacy

Former Detroit Pistons player Isiah Thomas addresses the audience during a half-time celebration of the 1989 NBA championship during an NBA basketball game against the Miami Heat, Friday, March 28, 2014, in Auburn Hills, Mich. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)

Isiah Thomas, center, and from left, Bill Lamibeer and Joe Dumars reminisce during a fundraiser on Thursday, March 27, 2014 in Detroit. Thomas, Laimbeer, Vinnie Johnson and other players from the 1988-89 and '89-90 teams took part in "Bad Boys Unite," which raised money for six nonprofit organizations in southeast Michigan, including the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy. (AP Photo/Detroit News, Clarence Tabb, Jr) DETROIT FREE PRESS OUT; HUFFINGTON POST OUT

The 1980s is considered by many to be the greatest decade of basketball.

People always wax poetically about the ‘Showtime’ Los Angeles Lakers who won five championships in the 80s, the Larry Bird led Celtics who won three and ‘Doctor J’ Julius Erving and 76ers who won a title in 1983. And then there is the team that won the final two championships of the decade, the team that doesn’t “belong.” The Bad Boys Pistons.

The Pistons were able to overthrow the Celtics and Lakers on its way to two championships and hold off the Michael Jordan and the Bulls before they went on to win six championships in the ‘90s.

But there Pistons rarely get put in the same category as the Celtics, Lakers and Bulls of that time period. People talk about Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan. Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars names never seem to come up.

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The Pistons honored the 25th anniversary of the 1989 championship team this week and some of the Bad Boys had a chance to talk about their legacy.

Some of the former Pistons are still bothered by the lack of respect they got then and still get to this day. Others claim they never cared because they won championships, which can never be taken away. But it’s still difficult to understand why those teams never earned the respect they should have nationally and why their legacy is often overlooked.

“We were overthrowing the dynasties,” Thomas said. “Now that you look back at that period of time, the ‘86 Celtic team has gone down in history as the best team to ever play or the best team ever assembled. Looking back now and understanding the giants that we were fighting against. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar being in my opinion the greatest player to ever play.

“The championships that the Lakers were winning, the Celtics were winning and just trying to beat all those guys and overthrowing them, there was a lot of doubt about if we could do it. And could we do it with a center that shot 3-point shots and a guard that was, I fight for the one inch, I’m gonna say 6-1. There was a lot of doubt about if we could do it. They had never seen a team like us assembled and play that style of play.”

The Pistons got the reputation of being thugs and many consider their style to be the cause of the “Jordan rules.” But there was more to those Detroit teams than a few hard fouls. The desire, competitiveness, fire and mental toughness those teams displayed was incredible.

“We competed hard,” Thomas said. “There’s a fine line between sincere, hard competition and violence. We played with sincere, hard competition and I think some people feared that and probably perceived it as violence. We were extremely competitive and we fought for every inch of turf that was out on the floor.”

The Bad Boys were full of personalities and players fans could potentially relate to. You had the fiery leader Thomas, who was barely above 6-foot tall, the soft-spoken Dumars, the frontline duo of Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn, John Salley, Vinnie Johnson and of course Dennis Rodman.

“We were extremely fun to watch,” Laimbeer said. “We had personalities that you could attach yourself to, no matter who you were. It just grew into something that culminated into a championship. Once you win a championship they always remember you, but at the same time the personalities, the style of play, just the hard-nose of who we were exemplified what people of this area are about. They grew up, they understood NBA basketball at that time.”

The Pistons also had the great storyline. Detroit fell to the Celtics in 1987 in the Eastern Conference finals after Thomas’ ill-fated inbounds pass in Game 5, only to comeback the next season and defeat the Celtics to advance to the finals.

Once in the NBA Finals the Pistons fell in seven games to the Lakers thanks to the “phantom foul” in Game 6 and Thomas being injured in Game 7. But the Pistons redeemed themselves by defeating the Lakers the following year in the finals to win the 1989 championship.

The 6-foot point guard, the center who shot 3-point shots, overcoming the NBA’s biggest dynasties, Disney couldn’t write it any better, but still to this day the Bad Boys legacy is not championships or changing how the game was played, it’s hard fouls and “thugs.”

The Pistons will finally get a chance to put their spin on their legacy in the upcoming ESPN 30 for 30 documentary.

“I think it’s the first step to really putting our voice around our story and our narrative,” Thomas said. “For too long our story and our narrative of the Detroit Pistons was defined by and talked about by others. Basically by the people that we beat. They would tell the story about the Detroit Pistons. We could never really get our voices out into the national relm of thinking. Here locally everybody understood what we were about.

“The more you talked about who we were in terms of a lot of us are college graduates on the team. But at that time the narrative around us didn’t want to hear that so now we’re happy we really get a chance to articulate and talk about who we were from a mental toughness standpoint, not just a physical standpoint.”

About the Author

Dave Pemberton covered the Detroit Pistons for The Oakland Press. Prior to that he covered the Oakland University basketball team. Reach the author at dave.pemberton@oakpress.com
or follow Dave on Twitter: @drpemberton.